


Forsaken

by Merit



Category: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone
Genre: Free Market Healthcare, Gen, Implied Child Harm, Implied Human Sacrifice, flaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:29:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8353399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merit/pseuds/Merit
Summary: They met at the most fierce battleground of the Gods' War.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellscabanaboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellscabanaboy/gifts).



Revenge was easier said than done.

After his lover had been slashed open, his heart offered to a god, his name forgotten the next day, he wandered his city without purpose. His eyes were rimmed red, his clothes filthy, his hair tangled. At the edges of Dresediel Lex, no one spared him a second glance. But she did. Her hair was slicked back, her robes black. She whispered in his ear, closer than any woman before, and he had listened rapt.

She offered the path. In her eyes he had seen the stars and oh he had heard rumors about the Craft, even a city wrapped so deeply around the gods as Dresediel Lex.

She had slipped away, a promise on her lips. After a time he slowly rose to his feet. He exited the god forsaken bar and wandered, no aim, no purpose.

Children laughed, swinging close to a small altar, their gazes turned away, their feet always dancing a respectful distance. It was nothing like the great altars on the pyramids, blood drenched and bright with blood. A priest lurked in the shadows, hie gaze on the children as he sharpened his knife.

His throat dried.

It was that night he slipped away from his city, hair freshly washed, stars blooming in the sky. The Craftswoman met him on the way, hair still slick, a promising smile on her face. They traveled leagues away from the borders of Dresediel Lex, to a place where the gods' gaze was less keen. Grief had patterned the flesh under his eyes, had driven the fat away from his ribs, till the bones jutted out from skin.

He had raised his hands to the sky, the starlight shining mercilessly down to his bones. It felt like a greater benediction than any gift of the gods.

That night he performed his first bit of conscious Craft. As the earth moved around him, water bubbling to the surface, he vowed revenge for his dead lover once more.

It was he who brought the Gods' War to Dresediel Lex.

 

* * *

 

The days were dying. Every sunset was streaked scarlet, great daggers of carmine clouds, bloody fingers clawing at the encroaching dusk, stars silenced even before they had bloomed in a night sky.

And the screams.

Not the scream of a sacrifice, blood dripping from his fingers, the heart warm and oh so fragile in one hand, the dagger heavy in his other. The gods, all of them, screaming in his ear. Joyous, triumphant and always, always hungry for more.

The gods were screaming. Jagged sounds of fear that drove daggers deep into Temoc's flesh. It made him pause, in the midst of battle, as another scream was cut short. He was afraid for a moment. Then screaming continued, a crescendo that wiped out thought.

Shrieking, wailing death knells as the Craftsmen and women cut them down. Dragged their still struggling corpses to the ground and cut them open in a harsh mimicry of the sacred rites Temoc had performed as a priest. The Craftspeople swarmed over the corpses, like vultures, black robed or garbed in strange attire. Whispered strange spells of accounting, dividends and blood rites.

Temoc cut down hundreds. Black clad figures shrieking, crying out to no god. Too rushed to properly perform any rites, their blood wasted on the earth, earth that always hungered for fresh blood. Earth that dried with every passing day, as the people turned their backs against the gods, faces upturned towards the strangers in their lands. The people had consumed the water bought by the gods and forgotten their bargains. Promises felt like dust on Temoc's tongue.

Temoc felt the gods keening, weeping in his ear. Always quieter with each passing day as more of their kin were slayed. They weakened but Temoc had never felt stronger. He felt like he could slay a thousand Craft blasphemers.

And still they came.

It was folly. Temoc was an Eagle Knight and cursed Craft could not defeat him.

But Temoc saw fellow Eagle Knights, older, wiser, men who had slaughtered a hundred odd children, offering their hearts up to the gods, fall. Temoc lived, the scars still alive on his flesh. The scars seemed brighter, deeper, almost as if the gods had clung to him, claws hooked deep until they reached his heart.

Temoc could not abandon them.

 

* * *

 

The King in Red adjusted his robes and surveyed his kingdom. Dresediel Lex was a broken tapestry, pyramids smoking in the sunset, streaking the bloody skies with gray ash. A Craftswoman shrieked behind him, the left side of her body raw and shockingly pink. One of the Eagle Knights had attempted to flay her and she had almost dodged in time. The blood vessels had burst in her eyes as she clawed at the people holding her down.

“Knock her out,” he ordered, not looking away from his view of Dresediel Lex. Her screams died. The city was quiet. She might survive. Their tentative efforts to set up a soulstuff bank were still in the early stages and it was possible she hadn't stashed enough away to save her life.

The smell of burning flesh hadn't left his lungs for days.

Sacrifice or battleground slaughter, the two blurred in his mind. Then he shook his head.

Already Dresediel Lex was shifting in his eyes. His gaze flickered to the sky. Stars were beginning to fight through the clouds, he rolled his sleeves of his robes up.

The starlight seemed to race faster to his bones these days.

He didn't have any use for flesh now.

The King in Red turned away from Dresediel Lex and entered the pyramid. It had been taken three nights ago, a score of Eagle Knights perishing, their blood staining the long lines of the pyramid. It had burnt away the next day, scorched by the harsh sun of Dresediel Lex.

There was talk he would turn the pyramid into an office. A shrine of death turned into a mere place where paper was pushed. It amused him. Though any office of his would be more than mere paper, parchment of skin, zombies chained to desk, demons bound in a multitude of ways, golems grinding away for an eternity and the Craft performed without impunity in sacred halls.

There were whispers that all the Eagle Knights had been slain.

It was a sweet lie. The King in Red knew at least one was still alive.

 

* * *

 

They met in the one of most brilliant battles of the dying Gods' War. Temoc had parried with the King in Red in the past, but the cursed man had always escaped. Craft confusing Temoc's senses. The King in Red towered over Temoc now, a thousand of his damned people swirling behind him, all clad in black and it soured Temoc's stomach to see familiar faces of Dresediel Lex. The foreigners had corrupted his people and Temoc wept for them.

The earth rumbled as they met.

The gods shrieked in his ears. They urged him to fight harder, faster. To drive the usurper from their sacred temples. They despaired over the hundreds of their brethren that had been slayed by his hand. They longed for revenge. Their voices rose, a cacophony, drowning out all thought and reason.

Temoc prayed.

The sky shattered, glass raining on his head, scoring deep cuts in his cheeks. Pain scattered his thoughts.

The King in Red laughed, red robes swirling around him. Red robes stained with the blood of thousands and he _laughed_.

The gods were silent.

And Temoc fell.

 

* * *

 

The Eagle Knights were dead or vanished. Temoc felt their betrayal deep where his heart was. His body ached with wounds inflicted by the King in Red. At the edge of Dresediel Lex, Temoc turned and looked over his city.

The gods wept. They were mere shadows of the figures of might Temoc had grown up with. They whispered in his ear, the most intimate of friends. They begged, they threatened, they urged him to flee, they wanted him to fight.

They wanted him to make someone bleed, to suffer for their loss. They wanted someone to die. They wanted so many people to die.

Temoc longed with them.

He longed for a slick blade in his hand, a body in front of him, the flesh cut smoothly. The heart held up high, the gods screaming with joy in his ear, his world safer.

Dresediel Lex was barren. The sky was free of long columns of black smoke, fresh sacrifices forsaken. Already the apostate sky towers were being built, cloud forbidden from the city. They circled around the city, tentative. An exile like Temoc himself.

The gods whispered love in his ears, they promised long life, they promised victory over their enemies, _his_ enemies. Their Eagle Knight.

He turned his back on Dresediel Lex and began a long walk into the desert.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you NightsMistress for the beta!


End file.
